


Family Supper

by uumuu



Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [7]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Extra Treat, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Maglor isn't alone (though he would like to be even less alone).





	Family Supper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lunarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/gifts).



“Wait.”

Maglor halted, shivering slightly at the rumbling huskiness of his father's voice. With his peripheral vision he saw his brothers moving forward, scanning the forest and picking up sounds that his ears couldn't. 

“Humans, further up ahead.”

Maglor nodded. By the way his father spoke he knew Fëanor had put a hand on his shoulder, that he was so close behind him he should have been able to turn and hug him. Maglor longed to feel his touch, his warmth, to sink into his embrace and feel like he was home. But if he turned he would find nothing more than a shadow of his father.

The twins hurried on, gliding noiselessly on the air, gentle as a breeze but deadly as an arrow. The appearance of one ghost was usually enough to scare humans out of their wits; the twins together could scare off entire armies. 

When Maglor arrived to the spot where the humans had been, a nice secluded depression in the forest floor sheltered by beech and maple trees, only a couple bags and mantles were left strewn around a crackling campfire.

“It seems we got you a nice supper,” Caranthir said, nodding towards the boar roasting over the fire.

“What are you waiting for, it's a nice catch, don't let it char. We'll make sure the humans don't come back,” Celegorm piped in. 

They floated over to a nice trunk positioned right next to the fire as a seat. Maglor followed them, sat down and examined his surroundings more closely, though most of all he wanted to make absolutely sure that his father and brothers were still all there. 

It had taken him a while to convince himself that the ghosts were not a product of his imagination, or a sinister apparition under fair guise. It had taken a while, because he had not wanted to be convinced that his brothers and father were there with him as houseless fëar. Now, he was even more afraid that they would disappear all of a sudden, and leave him as alone as he had been after Maedhros committed suicide and before they found him wandering grief-gnawed on a beach. Sometimes, he wished they had never found him at all.

He dropped his bag, and took out his hunting knife, more substantial, more _real_ in his hand that the one who had made it. Before he began to eat, he took the Silmaril out of his bag too and held it out to his father. 

Fëanor picked the gem up, his fingers brushing against Maglor's hand but not touching it. Fëanor smiled at him and sat opposite him, with Curufin at his side.

The Silmaril not only suffered his touch, but sparkled in his ghostly hands as Fëanor rolled it over and over between them, as if it were a puzzle he had to solve. Maglor began to cut into the boar but his eyes kept returning to his father. The forest glowed pure golden in the late afternoon, the last refulgence of the sun alighting on the deep yellow leaves, on the trees and on the forest floor, and it coloured Fëanor's shadow and smouldered on the Silmaril.

Maglor's mind went back to times spent under a different golden light, to faraway evenings spent rambling about all and nothing, singing or even bickering around cosy bonfires in the wilderness of Valinor, until his vision began to cloud, and the line between past and present blurred before his very eyes.

“Cáno, don't cry.” 

Maglor started. His head snapped to his right. Maedhros's ghost smiled at him, fire-bright and towering. His Silmaril glowed inside him, somewhere where not even their father could reach it. Maedhros had died wishing to never be parted from the Silmaril again.

“I'm sorry, Cáno.”

Maglor blinked tears away from his eyes and shook his head. He looked at his father and at his brothers once again, lingering on each one of them. The smell of the fire began to disgust him, reminding him as it did of his father's last moments, of burning his little brothers' corpses, of Maedhros leaving him. He kicked dirt onto the logs. “I just wish I could hold you.”

“Eventually, Cáno, eventually.” 

Maglor turned to his father. Fëanor's eyes were fixed on him, resolute and forceful as his voice, and their brightness was the same of when he was alive of when they were happy. “I promise you will never be alone again.”


End file.
